JDN: "I am against ILLEGAL Immigration period." - Right and that was the only point of the analogy, THEY have the right to control who enters the event even if I think Sarah Palin or Glen Beck should be free to walk in and liven up the event. Having rules and enforcement is necessary for security and to keep some sort of control. They won't be checking docs for Michelle Obama or Hillary Clinton because they look familiar, but if either were to run a red light in AZ they would be asked for their driver's license and proof of insurance, and if something indicates they may be a foreign national then whatever other documents legally required would be needed. Plenty of blond/slightly graying people are non-US citizens. Jose can not lawfully be pulled over for looking Hispanic but Wolfgang or Lars, if caught speeding, may be detained for carrying a false ID or expired visa. True?

@GM: Well, back in my hippy dippy days in the 60s the numbers were far, far smaller AND I was , , , dippy. Stil,l I did notice that Nixon's anti-pot campaign against Mexico had the effect of jump-starting the cocaine trade which now poisons everything in Mexico. Shrewd, real shrewd In the 70s, I discovered that my anti-authorian nature was more at home on the right than the left (my micro and macro econ courses at U. Penn played a big role here) and I began seriousl travel and study in Mexico and about Mexico at Penn. My studies at Penn educated me inter alia about the demographics of the Mexican population growth rate and the political-economics of its economy. In the 1980's I regarded Reagan's amnesty as a reasonable compromise that would solve the growing problem. In the 1990s I saw that the Feds did not keep the promise of the Reagan compromise to defend the border in return for amnesty. So, now, in this millenium I apply the saying "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me."

I like Mexico. I like Mexicans. Mexico was my focus country when I majored in International Relations at U. of PA. I speak Spanish, rather well I might add, when I go to Mexico. I only get into Mexico when they let me do so and as required by Mexican law I carry my tourist visa with me when I am there. When I spent the summer after my first year of law school working for the largest law firm in Mexico (I had spent a semester at a Mexican law school between getting my BA at U Penn and entering Columbia law school here in the US) I had to comply with Mexican law in order to do so.

@all:

JDN's post plants the question fairly, and I think GM answers it well. PC nails the disingenuous nature of the POTH piece.

I was going for a more simplistic point, meaning that the generational divide on illegal immigration is similar to the generational divide on other topics. What makes sense in one's late teens/early 20's often doesn't survive contact with actual adulthood. The bio is interesting though.

Woof, To clarify how the law would be implemented; firstly, any consideration of legal status must come after, I repeat, after contact has been made with any subject during the course of a law enforcement officer detaining them for some violation of law and during the course of this detention has cause to suspect that the subject is here illegally, the officer can then investigate the subjects legal status. In other words, if you run a stop sign and the cop pulls you over and you don't have a valid drivers license or any other form of ID on you or if you have a foreign license or something that shows that you are from another nation, and you can't produce a green card or passport then the cop can reasonably suspect that the subject is here illegally. It doesn't matter if they are white, brown or three shades of green with a clowns nose on their face, if there is some evidence that they are here illegally, then they can be detained futher until their status is established. If you are hispanic and are pulled over for running a stop sign, the cop will ask you for your license, he'll look at it, write you a ticket for running the sign or give you a warning, and send you on your way. There is no profiling involved in this law. P.C.

Aurora— As new questions arose about the man police say is responsible for the tragedy, several hundred friends and relatives gathered Saturday night outside an ice cream shop to mourn three lives suddenly lost.

"It hurts now," said Vito Kudlis, surrounded by friends as he and his wife, Enely, wept for their 3-year-old son, Marten. "It is freaky. It is crazy."

Marten, Patricia Guntharp, 49, of Centennial and Debra Serecky, 51, of Aurora all died when a Thursday night collision caused vehicles to careen into the Baskin-Robbins at the corner of South Havana Street and East Mississippi Avenue.

Saturday night, they were remembered in a candlelight vigil. Small children held glow sticks as others added stuffed animals —

The mother of a boy killed while eating ice cream at a Baskin Robbins Thursday night brings his toy to the scene Friday morning at 1155 S. Havana St. in Aurora, Colorado. She left it at the scene, as well as a photograph of her son. (THE DENVER POST | Brian Brainerd)especially bears — to a memorial. Francis Hernandez, the man being held for suspicion of vehicular homicide in the deaths, is now being detained by federal immigration officials.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials sent a faxed detainer on Hernandez, 23, at 12:04 a.m. Saturday, indicating his U.S. citizenship is under question, according to Arapahoe County jail officials and federal authorities.

Hernandez has been arrested 16 times in five years in Colorado but apparently has never been deported, according to Colorado Bureau of Investigation records.

On Friday, Aurora authorities had indicated they believed he was a U.S. citizen.

Hernandez had been arrested in Denver as recently as July 18 on a traffic stop and charged with numerous crimes, including resisting police, CBI records say. Had he been held on an ICE detainer at that time, he would have been jailed until his case was completed and his sentence served and then deported, a time-consuming process.

Hernandez is now being held on the ICE detainer and for investigation of three counts of vehicular homicide, reckless driving and hit and run in Thursday night's accident, Aurora police spokesman Lt. John Sopranuk said.

His bail was

Marten Kudlis' father, Marat, is consoled as he visits the scene Friday where the 3-year-old was killed Thursday night. (Brian Brainerd, The Denver Post )raised Friday from $10,000 to $100,000, according to Sgt. Lisa Grosskruger of the Arapahoe County jail. Sopranuk said Hernandez was driving a Chevy Suburban rapidly and erratically south on South Havana shortly after 8 p.m. Thursday. Police said he ran a red light at the intersection of Mississippi and Havana.

The SUV hit a northbound white Mazda pickup carrying Guntharp and Serecky, which was turning into the Good Times burger outlet. The impact sent the truck more than 100 feet into the corner of the Baskin-Robbins in the Market Square shopping center.

The two women were killed by the impact and Marten suffered fatal injuries from flying debris.

Dating back to 2003, Hernandez has been arrested for mostly misdemeanor

A photo of the child and his stuffed toy were left at the scene of the accident Friday morning at 1155 S. Havana St. in Aurora, Colorado. (THE DENVER POST | Brian Brainerd)offenses 16 times by police officers in Denver, Longmont, Aurora, Westminster, Lakewood and Broomfield and sheriff's deputies in Boulder, Gilpin and Arapahoe counties, according to Colorado Bureau of Investigation records. His charges have included forgery, assault, theft, fraud and driving under restraint. Sopranuk said Friday that Hernandez was born in California and is a U.S. citizen.

But he added that detectives could find no indication that he had ever held a driver's license in California or Colorado.

Also according to CBI records, Hernandez, who has 11 aliases and two listed birth dates, has four listed birth places, including Mexico.

ICE placed a detainer because of indications he was born outside the country, said

The scene Friday morning at 1155 S. Havana St. in Aurora where three died when a small pickup crashed into a Baskin Robbins ice cream shop Thursday night, Sept. 4, 2008. (THE DENVER POST | Brian Brainerd)ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok. Officers are currently investigating his citizenship, he said. When ICE did not place a hold on Hernandez following his July 18 arrest, he was released and has since been listed as a fugitive, according to CBI records.

There were multiple warrants for his arrest when the fatal accident happened Thursday, Sopranuk said.

Sopranuk could not be reached for comment Saturday.

Rusnok said it is possible that if Hernandez is in the country illegally that his status was not checked or identified previously despite numerous arrests.

He said in some instances suspects are arrested for minor offenses and they are released on bail or serve short sentences before a citizenship check is done.

ICE places a priority on deporting illegal immigrants who have been arrested for crimes, Rusnok said. Sometimes ICE agents make regular visits to jails checking for suspects illegally in the country, he said.

Back at the ice cream shop on Saturday night, the family announced that Marten's funeral will be 10 a.m. Wednesday at Fairmont Cemetery. Arrangements for Guntharp and Serecky are pending.

Tragic.....But no, although the AZ law has merit, this could not have been avoided.

From the article, it is my understanding that "Aurora authorities had indicated they believed he was a U.S. citizen".Further, even ICE seems to acknowledge that he is a citizen, however because it was fraudulently obtained, it is being questioned.

Hopefully, because his citizenship was fraudulently obtained, he will be incarcerated, his citizenship taken away, and later deported. But thisis a complicated issue for qualified trained ICE personnel to handle, not local AZ police to handle. I presume AZ police would of course arrest him, whether he is a legitimate citizen or immigrant, regardless of whether he is legal or illegal, for three counts of vehicular homicide, reckless driving and hit and run et al.

Dating back to 2003, Hernandez has been arrested for mostly misdemeanor offenses 16 times by police officers in Denver, Longmont, Aurora, Westminster, Lakewood and Broomfield and sheriff's deputies in Boulder, Gilpin and Arapahoe counties, according to Colorado Bureau of Investigation records. His charges have included forgery, assault, theft, fraud and driving under restraint. Sopranuk said Friday that Hernandez was born in California and is a U.S. citizen.

**He claimed to be a US citizen. He, in fact was an illegal alien from Guatamala. I can tell you from first hand experience that lots of illegals have numerous aliases in the system and bogusly claim to be citizens and ICE doesn't have the manpower to vett every arrestee. This is why local/state law enforcement needs to do it as well.**

Hong Kong's highest court in a1999 decision allowed 8,000 mainland-born Chinese whose parents had permanent resident status to move to Hong Kong. This "right of abode" was overturned by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress in Beijing at the request of the Hong Kong government, threatening the judicial independence of Hong Kong's highest court. In January 2002, Hong Kong's highest court affirmed the Chinese government's reversal of its earlier ruling, and the Hong Kong government moved to deport the children of some Hong Kong residents.

Chinese-born children with at least one parent who is a permanent Hong Kong resident are permitted to live in the territory, but only if they were born after the parent received legal resident status.

The court gave the 7,300 "unlawful migrants" from the mainland who were in Hong Kong at the time of the ruling until March 31, 2002 to leave. Only 3,000 left; some 4,300 "abode seekers" defied the order to leave and became unauthorized residents. The abode-seekers made a last-ditch legal effort to stay, but their effort to obtain legal aid, the government ruled, does not entitle them to stay while they appeal.

Hong Kong police began searching for the mainlanders who were to leave Hong Kong in a manner that critics called "wufa wutian" (without law, without heaven)". On April 7, 2002, the first migrant was forcibly sent back to the mainland, and police continued to intercept and return the remaining 4,300 in April and May. Some of the migrants camped out at a park in central Hong Kong, hoping that their large numbers and the presence of reporters and photographers would keep the police away. Hong Kong's security secretary, Regina Ip, said "Our position is very clear. [The mainlanders] shouldn't be sneaking around in Hong Kong and wasting time but should return quickly to rebuild their lives."

In one story widely reported in Hong Kong, a Chinese father was allowed to bring only one of his twin daughters to Hong Kong in 1979. The then 12-year old girls played "paper, scissors, stone" to determine who would go to Hong Kong. The daughter in China was granted a tourist visa in 1999, and has lived illegally in Hong Kong since. The now 19-year old twin was told to report to immigration authorities for deportation in April, but at the last minute, she was allowed to stay because of her exceptional circumstances.

Most Hong Kong residents are not sympathetic to the migrants being removed. Many believe that the latest arrivals have fewer skills and impose more of a burden on society than previous migrants. The Hong Kong government has warned that, if it is not tough on mainland migrnats, densely settled Hong Kong will receive several million more migrants. The director of Hong Kong's external investment bureau blamed Chinese migrants for Hong Kong's seven percent unemployment rate.

Hong Kong allows 150 mainland Chinese a day, or 54,750 a year, to immigrate, and allows mainland Chinese to visit Hong Kong relatives for two three-month periods a year. Many of them are poor: 18 percent of new mainland migrants in Hong Kong are on welfare- the 60,127 account for one percent of Hong Kong residents, and 15 percent of Hong Kong welfare recipients. Of the 173,212 immigrants aged 15 and older who settled over the past seven years, 70 percent did not advance beyond Form Three secondary school education. Some 43 percent of new immigrants earned less than $HK6,000 a month, compared to 19 percent of all Hong Kong residents.

GM; you said, "This is why local/state law enforcement needs to do it as well."

Regarding Hernandez immigration issues, what should local law enforcement have done?

I mean according to best information available, local law enforcement, i.e. Lt. Sopranuk, thought Hernandez was born in California and is a U.S. citizen. Further, it seems Hernandez had an AZ driver's license (or I could not find any information to the contrary).

It truly is a job for ICE; they have the resources, training and expertise. Not local law enforcement...

Often in the booking process, the info entered is supplied by the subject being booked. When I was a state C.O. many years ago, we had several juveniles who were illegals from Guatamala housed in our facility for several days until it was figured out that they were adults. Whoops! Luckily, they didn't assault/sexually assault any other inmates in that time period before they were move to an adult facility.

Enforcing our nation�s immigration laws is one of the most daunting challenges faced by the federal government. With an estimated 8-10 million illegal aliens already present in the United States and fewer than 2,000 interior enforcement agents at its disposal, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (BICE) has a Herculean task on its hands � one that it simply cannot accomplish alone.

The assistance of state and local law enforcement agencies can mean the difference between success and failure in enforcing immigration laws. The more than 650,000 police officers nationwide represent a massive force multiplier.

This Backgrounder briefly summarizes the legal authority upon which state and local police may act in rendering such assistance and describes the scenarios in which this assistance is most crucial. It does not cover the provisions of Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) (that is, Section 133 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA) of 1996 titled "Acceptance of State Services to Carry Out Immigration Enforcement"), since the scope of such delegated authority is evident on the face of the Act. Rather, this Backgrounder describes the inherent arrest authority that has been possessed and exercised by state and local police since the earliest days of federal immigration law.

It has long been widely recognized that state and local police possess the inherent authority to arrest aliens who have violated criminal provisions of the INA. Once the arrest is made, the police officer must contact federal immigration authorities and transfer the alien into their custody within a reasonable period of time. Bear in mind that the power to arrest � and take temporary custody of � an immigration law violator is a subset of the broader power to "enforce." This is an important distinction between inherent arrest authority and 287(g) authority to enforce � which includes arresting, investigating, preparing a case, and all of the other powers exercised by BICE agents.

Where some confusion has existed in recent years is on the question of whether the same authority extends to arresting aliens who have violated civil provisions of the INA that render an alien deportable. This confusion was, to some extent, fostered by an erroneous 1996 opinion of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) of the Department of Justice, the relevant part of which has since been withdrawn by OLC. However, the law on this question is quite clear: arresting aliens who have violated either criminal provisions of the INA or civil provisions that render an alien deportable "is within the inherent authority of the states."1 And such inherent arrest authority has never been preempted by Congress.

This conclusion has been confirmed by every court to squarely address the issue. Indeed, it is difficult to make a persuasive case to the contrary. That said, I will proceed to offer my personal opinion as to why this conclusion is correct. I offer this legal analysis purely in my private capacity as a law professor and not on behalf of the Bush Administration.

State Arrest AuthorityThe preliminary question is whether the states have inherent power (subject to federal preemption) to make arrests for violation of federal law. That is, may state police, exercising state law authority only, make arrests for violations of federal law, or do they have power to make such arrests only insofar as they are exercising delegated federal executive power? The answer to this question is plainly the former.

The source of this authority flows from the states� status as sovereign entities. They are sovereign governments possessing all residual powers not abridged or superceded by the U.S. Constitution. The source of the state governments� power is entirely independent of the U.S. Constitution. See Sturges v. Crowninshield, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 122, 193 (1819). Moreover, the enumerated powers doctrine that constrains the powers of the federal government does not so constrain the powers of the states. Rather, the states possess what are known as "police powers," which need not be specifically enumerated. Police powers are "an exercise of the sovereign right of the government to protect the lives, health, morals, comfort, and general welfare of the people�" Manigault v. Springs, 199 U.S. 473, 480 (1905). Essentially, states may take any action (consistent with their own constitutions and laws) unless there exists a prohibition in the U.S. Constitution or such action has been preempted by federal law.2

It is well established that the authority of state police to make arrests for violation of federal law is not limited to those situations in which they are exercising delegated federal power. Rather, such arrest authority inheres in the States� status as sovereign entities. It stems from the basic power of one sovereign to assist another sovereign. This is the same inherent authority that is exercised whenever a state law enforcement officer witnesses a federal crime being committed and makes an arrest. That officer is not acting pursuant to delegated federal power. Rather, he is exercising the inherent power of his state to assist another sovereign.

Abundant Case Law. There is abundant case law on this point. Even though Congress has never authorized state police officers to make arrest for federal offenses without an arrest warrant, such arrests occur routinely; and the Supreme Court has recognized that state law controls the validity of such an arrest. As the Court concluded in United States v. Di Re, "No act of Congress lays down a general federal rule for arrest without warrant for federal offenses. None purports to supersede state law. And none applies to this arrest which, while for a federal offense, was made by a state officer accompanied by federal officers who had no power of arrest. Therefore the New York statute provides the standard by which this arrest must stand or fall." 332 U.S. 581, 591 (1948). The Court�s conclusion presupposes that state officers possess the inherent authority to make warrantless arrests for federal offenses. The same assumption guided the Court in Miller v. United States. 357 U.S. 301, 305 (1958). As the Seventh Circuit has explained, "[state] officers have implicit authority to make federal arrests." U.S. v. Janik, 723 F.2d 537, 548 (7th Cir. 1983). Accordingly, they may initiate an arrest on the basis of probable cause to think that an individual has committed a federal crime. Id.

The Ninth and Tenth Circuits have expressed this understanding in the immigration context specifically. In Gonzales v. City of Peoria, the Ninth Circuit opined in an immigration case that the "general rule is that local police are not precluded from enforcing federal statutes," 722 F.2d 468, 474 (9th Cir. 1983). The Tenth Circuit has reviewed this question on several occasions, concluding squarely that a "state trooper has general investigatory authority to inquire into possible immigration violations," United States v. Salinas-Calderon, 728 F.2d 1298, 1301 n.3 (10th Cir. 1984). As the Tenth Circuit has described it, there is a "preexisting general authority of state or local police officers to investigate and make arrests for violations of federal law, including immigration laws," United States v. Vasquez-Alvarez, 176 F.3d 1294, 1295 (10th Cir. 1999). And again in 2001, the Tenth Circuit reiterated that "state and local police officers [have] implicit authority within their respective jurisdictions �to investigate and make arrests for violations of federal law, including immigration laws.�" United States v. Santana-Garcia, 264 F.3d 1188, 1194 (citing United States v. Vasquez-Alvarez, 176 F.3d 1294, 1295). None of these Tenth Circuit holdings drew any distinction between criminal violations of the INA and civil provisions that render an alien deportable. Rather, the inherent arrest authority extends generally to both categories of federal immigration law violations.

If his attitudes towards Jews are any indicator, PB can be a bit of a bigot so read the following interesting piece from 2002 with care:

a Cause of the Clash of Civilizations . . .Or a Solution to it? Patrick Buchanan vs. Ben Wattenberg

Patrick Buchanan: Shields up!

In 1821, a newly independent Mexico invited Americans to settle in its northern province of Texas?on two conditions: Americans must embrace Roman Catholicism, and they must swear allegiance to Mexico. Thousands took up the offer. But, in 1835, after the tyrannical General Santa Anna seized power, the Texans, fed up with loyalty oaths and fake conversions, and outnumbering Mexicans in Texas ten to one, rebelled and kicked the tiny Mexican garrison back across the Rio Grande.

Santa Anna led an army north to recapture his lost province. At a mission called the Alamo, he massacred the first rebels who resisted. Then he executed the 400 Texans who surrendered at Goliad. But at San Jacinto, Santa Anna blundered straight into an ambush. His army was butchered, he was captured. The Texans demanded his execution for the Alamo massacre, but Texas army commander Sam Houston had another idea. He made the dictator an offer: his life for Texas. Santa Anna signed. And on his last day in office, Andrew Jackson recognized the independence of the Lone Star Republic.

Eight years later, the U.S. annexed the Texas republic. An enraged Mexico disputed the American claim to all land north of the Rio Grande, so President James Polk sent troops to the north bank of the river. When Mexican soldiers crossed and fired on a U.S. patrol, Congress declared war. By 1848, soldiers with names like Grant, Lee, and McClellan were in the city of Montezuma. A humiliated Mexico was forced to cede all of Texas, the Southwest, and California. The U.S. gave Mexico $15 million to ease the anguish of amputation.

Mexicans seethed with hatred and resentment, and in 1910 the troubles began anew. After a revolution that was anti-church and anti-American, U.S. sailors were roughed up and arrested in Tampico. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson ordered the occupation of Vera Cruz by U.S. Marines. As Wilson explained to the British ambassador, "I am going to teach the South Americans to elect good men." When the bandit Pancho Villa led a murderous raid into New Mexico in 1916, Wilson sent General Pershing and 10,000 troops to do the tutoring.

Despite FDR's Good Neighbor Policy, President Cardenas nationalized U.S. oil companies in 1938- an event honored in Mexico to this day. Pemex was born, a state cartel that would collude with OPEC in 1999 to hike up oil prices to $35 a barrel. American consumers, whose tax dollars had supported a $50 billion bailout of a bankrupt Mexico in 1994, got gouged.

The point of this history? Mexico has an historic grievance against the United States that is felt deeply by her people. This is one factor producing deep differences in attitudes toward America between today's immigrants from places like Mexico and the old immigrants from Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe. With fully one-fifth of all people of Mexican ancestry now residing in the United States, and up to 1 million more crossing the border every year, we need to understand these differences.

1. The number of people pouring in from Mexico is larger than any wave from any country ever before. In the 1990s alone, the number of people of Mexican heritage living in the U.S. grew by 50 percent to at least 21 million. The Founding Fathers wanted immigrants to spread out among the population to ensure assimilation, but Mexican Americans are highly concentrated in the Southwest.

2. Mexicans are not only from another culture, but of another race. History has taught that different races are far more difficult to assimilate than different cultures. The 60 million Americans who claim German ancestry are fully assimilated, while millions from Africa and Asia are still not full participants in American society.

3. Millions of Mexicans broke the law to get into the United States, and they break the law every day they remain here. Each year, 1.6 million illegal aliens are apprehended, almost all of them at our bleeding southern border.

4. Unlike the immigrants of old, who bade farewell to their native lands forever, millions of Mexicans have no desire to learn English or become U.S. citizens. America is not their home; they are here to earn money. They remain proud Mexicans. Rather than assimilate, they create their own radio and TV stations, newspapers, films, and magazines. They are becoming a nation within a nation.

5. These waves of Mexican immigrants are also arriving in a different America than did the old immigrants. A belief in racial rights and ethnic entitlements has taken root among America's minorities and liberal elites. Today, ethnic enclaves are encouraged and ethnic chauvinism is rife in the barrios. Anyone quoting Calvin Coolidge's declaration that "America must remain American" today would be charged with a hate crime.

Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington, author of The Clash of Civilizations, calls migration "the central issue of our time." He has warned in the pages of this magazine:

If 1 million Mexican soldiers crossed the border, Americans would treat it as a major threat to their national security.... The invasion of over 1 million Mexican civilians...would be a comparable threat to American societal security, and Americans should react against it with vigor. Mexican immigration is a challenge to our cultural integrity, our national identity, and potentially to our future as a country. Yet, American leaders are far from reacting "with vigor," even though a Zogby poll found that 72 percent of Americans want less immigration, and a Rasmussen poll in July 2000 found that 89 percent support English as America's official language. The people want action. The elites disagree?and do nothing. Despite our braggadocio about being "the world's only remaining superpower," the U.S. lacks the fortitude to defend its borders and to demand, without apology, that immigrants assimilate to its society. Perhaps our mutual love of the dollar can bridge the cultural chasm, and we shall all live happily in what Ben Wattenberg calls the First Universal Nation. But Uncle Sam is taking a hellish risk in importing a huge diaspora of tens of millions of people from a nation vastly different from our own. It is not a decision we can ever undo. Our children will live with the consequences. "If assimilation fails," Huntington recognizes, "the United States will become a cleft country with all the potentials for internal strife and disunion that entails." Is that a risk worth taking?

A North American Union of Canada, Mexico, and the United States has been proposed by Mexican President Fox, with a complete opening of borders to the goods and peoples of the three countries. The Wall Street Journal is enraptured. But Mexico's per capita GDP of $5,000 is only a fraction of America's?the largest income gap on earth between two adjoining countries. Half of all Mexicans live in poverty, and 18 million people exist on less than $2 a day, while the U.S. minimum wage is headed for $50 a day. Throw open the border, and millions could flood into the United States within months. Is America nothing more than an economic system?

Our old image is of Mexicans as amiable Catholics with traditional values. There are millions of hard-working, family-oriented Americans of Mexican heritage, who have been quick to answer the call to arms in several of America's wars. And, yes, history has shown that any man or woman, from any country on the planet, can be a good American.

But today's demographic sea change, especially in California, where a fourth of the residents are foreign-born and almost a third are Latino, has spawned a new ethnic chauvinism. When the U.S. soccer team played Mexico in Los Angeles a few years ago, the "Star-Spangled Banner" was jeered, an American flag was torn down, and the U.S. team and its few fans were showered with beer bottles and garbage.

In the New Mexico legislature in 2001, a resolution was introduced to rename the state "Nuevo Mexico," the name it carried before it became a part of the American Union. When the bill was defeated, sponsor Representative Miguel Garcia suggested to reporters that "covert racism" may have been the cause.

A spirit of separatism, nationalism, and irredentism has come alive in the barrio. Charles Truxillo, a professor of Chicano Studies at the University of New Mexico, says a new "Aztlan," with Los Angeles as its capital, is inevitable. Jose Angel Gutierrez, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Arlington and director of the UTA Mexican-American Study Center, told a university crowd: "We have an aging white America. They are not making babies. They are dying. The explosion is in our population. They are shitting in their pants in fear! I love it."

More authoritative voices are sounding the same notes. The Mexican consul general Jos? Pescador Osuna remarked in 1998, "Even though I am saying this part serious, part joking, I think we are practicing La Reconquista in California." California legislator Art Torres called Proposition 187, to cut off welfare to illegal aliens, "the last gasp of white America."

"California is going to be a Mexican State. We are going to control all the institutions. If people don't like it, they should leave," exults Mario Obledo, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, and recipient of the Medal of Freedom from President Clinton. Former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo told Mexican-Americans in Dallas: "You are Mexicans, Mexicans who live north of the border."

Why should nationalistic and patriotic Mexicans not dream of a reconquista? The Latino student organization known by its Spanish acronym MEChA states, "We declare the independence of our mestizo nation. We are a bronze people with a bronze culture. Before the world, before all of North America?we are a nation." MEChA demands U.S. "restitution" for "past economic slavery, political exploitation, ethnic and cultural psychological destruction and denial of civil and human rights."

MEChA, which claims 4,000 campus chapters across the country, is unabashedly racist and anti-American. Its slogan?Por la Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada.?translates as "For our race, everything. For those outside our race, nothing." Yet it now exerts real power in many places. The former chair of its UCLA chapter, Antonio Villaraigosa, came within a whisker of being elected mayor of Los Angeles in 2001.

That Villaraigosa could go through an entire campaign for control of America's second-largest city without having to explain his association with a Chicano version of the white-supremacist Aryan Nation proves that America's major media are morally intimidated by any minority that boasts past victimhood credentials, real or imagined.

Meanwhile, the invasion rolls on. America's once-sleepy 2,000-mile border with Mexico is now the scene of daily confrontations. Even the Mexican army shows its contempt for U.S. law. The State Department reported 55 military incursions in the five years before an incident in 2000 when truckloads of Mexican soldiers barreled through a barbed-wire fence, fired shots, and pursued two mounted officers and a U.S. Border Patrol vehicle. U.S. Border Patrol agents believe that some Mexican army units collaborate with their country's drug cartels.

America has become a spillway for an exploding population that Mexico is unable to employ. Mexico's population is growing by 10 million every decade. Mexican senator Adolfo Zinser conceded that Mexico's "economic policy is dependent on unlimited emigration to the United States." The Yanqui-baiting academic and "onetime Communist supporter" Jorge Caste?ada warned in The Atlantic Monthly six years ago that any American effort to cut back immigration "will make social peace in?Mexico untenable.... Some Americans dislike immigration, but there is very little they can do about it." With Se?or Caste?ada now President Fox's foreign minister and Senator Zinser his national security adviser, these opinions carry weight.

The Mexican government openly supports illegal entry of its citizens into the United States. An Office for Mexicans Abroad helps Mexicans evade U.S. border guards in the deserts of Arizona and California by providing them with "survival kits" of water, dry meat, Granola, Tylenol, anti-diarrhea pills, bandages, and condoms. The kits are distributed in Mexico's poorest towns, along with information on where illegal aliens can get free social services in California. Mexico is aiding and abetting an invasion of the United States, and the U.S. responds with intimidated silence and moral paralysis.

With California the preferred destination for this immigration flood, sociologist William Frey has documented an out-migration of African Americans and Anglo Americans from the Golden State in search of cities and towns like the ones in which they grew up. Other Californians are moving into gated communities. A country that cannot control its borders isn't really a country, Ronald Reagan warned some two decades ago.

Concerns about a radical change in America's ethnic composition have been called un-American. But they are as American as Benjamin Franklin, who once asked, "Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them?" Franklin would never find out if his fears were justified, because German immigration was halted during the Revolutionary War.

Theodore Roosevelt likewise warned that "The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities."

Immigration is a subject worthy of national debate, yet it has been deemed taboo by the forces of political correctness. Like the Mississippi, with its endless flow of life-giving water, immigration has enriched America throughout history. But when the Mississippi floods its banks, the devastation can be enormous. What will become of our country if the levees do not hold?

Harvard economist George Borjas has found no net economic benefit from mass migration from the Third World. In his study, the added costs of schooling, health care, welfare, prisons, plus the added pressure on land, water, and power resources, exceeded the taxes that immigrants pay. The National Bureau of Economic Research put the cost of immigration at $80 billion in 1995. What are the benefits, then, that justify the risk of the balkanization of America?

Today there are 28.4 million foreign-born persons living in the United States. Half are from Latin America and the Caribbean, one fourth from Asia. The rest are from Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. One in every five New Yorkers and Floridians is foreign-born, as is one of every four Californians. As the United States allots most of its immigrant visas to relatives of new arrivals, it is difficult for Europeans to be admitted to the U.S., while entire villages from El Salvador have settled here easily.

? A third of the legal immigrants who come to the United States have not finished high school. Some 22 percent do not even have a ninth-grade education, compared to less than 5 percent of our native-born.

? Of the immigrants who have arrived since 1980, 60 percent still do not earn $20,000 a year.

? Immigrant use of food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, and school lunch programs runs from 50 percent to 100 percent higher than use by the native born.

? By 1991, foreign nationals accounted for 24 percent of all arrests in Los Angeles and 36 percent of all arrests in Miami.

? In 1980, federal and state prisons housed 9,000 criminal aliens. By 1995, this number had soared to 59,000, a figure that does not include aliens who became citizens, or the criminals sent over from Cuba by Fidel Castro in the Mariel boat lift.

Mass emigration from poor Third World countries is good for business, especially businesses that employ large numbers of workers at low wages. But what is good for corporate America is not necessarily good for Middle America. When it comes to open borders, the corporate interest and the national interest do not coincide; they collide. Mass immigration raises more critical issues than jobs or wages?immigration is ultimately about America herself. Is the U.S. government, by deporting scarcely 1 percent of illegal aliens a year, failing in its Constitutional duty to protect the rights of American citizens?

Most of the people who leave their homelands to come to America, whether from Mexico or Mauritania, are good, decent people. They seek the same freedom and opportunities our ancestors sought.

But today's record number of immigrants arriving from cultures that have little in common with our own raises a question: What is a nation? Some define a nation as one people of common ancestry, language, literature, history, heritage, heroes, traditions, customs, mores, and faith who have lived together over time in the same land under the same rulers. Among those who pressed this definition were Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, who laid down these conditions on immigrants: "They must cast off the European skin, never to resume it. They must look forward to their posterity rather than backward to their ancestors." Woodrow Wilson, speaking to newly naturalized Americans in 1915 in Philadelphia, declared: "A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has yet to become an American."

But Americans no longer agree on values, history, or heroes. What one half of America sees as a glorious past, the other views as shameful and wicked. Columbus, Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and Lee?all of them heroes of the old America?are under attack. Equality and freedom, those most American of words, today hold different meanings for different Americans.

Nor is a shared belief in democracy sufficient to hold a people together. Half the nation did not even bother to vote in the Presidential election of 2000. Millions cannot name their congressman, senator, or the justices of the Supreme Court. They do not care. We live in the same country, we are governed by the same leaders. But are we one nation and one people?

It is hard to believe that over one million immigrants every year, from every country on earth, a third of them entering illegally, will reforge the bonds of our disuniting nation. John Stuart Mill cautioned that unified public opinion is "necessary to the working of representative government." We are about to find out if he was right.

This piece is a point-counter-point with the Buchanan piece of my previous post:

Ben Wattenberg: Immigration Is Good year: 2002

Many leading thinkers tell us we are now in a culture clash that will determine the course of history, that today's war is for Western civilization itself. There is a demographic dimension to this "clash of civilizations." While certain of today's demographic signals bode well for America, some look very bad. If we are to assess America's future prospects, we must start by asking, "Who are we?" "Who will we be?" and "How will we relate to the rest of the world?" The answers all involve immigration.

As data from the 2000 census trickled out, one item hit the headline jackpot. By the year 2050, we were told, America would be "majority non-white." The census count showed more Hispanics in America than had been expected, making them "America's largest minority." When blacks, Asians, and Native Americans are added to the Hispanic total, the "non-white" population emerges as a large minority, on the way to becoming a small majority around the middle of this century.

The first thing worth noting is that these rigid racial definitions are absurd. The whole concept of race as a biological category is becoming ever-more dubious in America. Consider:

Under the Clinton administration's census rules, any American who checks both the black and white boxes on the form inquiring about "race" is counted as black, even if his heritage is, say, one eighth black and seven eighths white. In effect, this enshrines the infamous segregationist view that one drop of black blood makes a person black.

Although most Americans of Hispanic heritage declare themselves "white," they are often inferentially counted as non-white, as in the erroneous New York Times headline which recently declared: "Census Confirms Whites Now a Minority" in California.

If those of Hispanic descent, hailing originally from about 40 nations, are counted as a minority, why aren't those of Eastern European descent, coming from about 10 nations, also counted as a minority? (In which case the Eastern European "minority" would be larger than the Hispanic minority.)

But within this jumble of numbers there lies a central truth: America is becoming a universal nation, with significant representation of nearly all human hues, creeds, ethnicities, and national ancestries. Continued moderate immigration will make us an even more universal nation as time goes on. And this process may well play a serious role in determining the outcome of the contest of civilizations taking place across the globe.

And current immigration rates are moderate, even though America admitted more legal immigrants from 1991 to 2000 than in any previous decade?between 10 and 11 million. The highest previous decade was 1901-1910, when 8.8 million people arrived. In addition, each decade now, several million illegal immigrants enter the U.S., thanks partly to ease of transportation.

Critics like Pat Buchanan say that absorbing all those immigrants will "swamp" the American culture and bring Third World chaos inside our borders. I disagree. Keep in mind: Those 8.8 million immigrants who arrived in the U.S. between 1901 and 1910 increased the total American population by 1 percent per year. (Our numbers grew from 76 million to 92 million during that decade.) In our most recent decade, on the other hand, the 10 million legal immigrants represented annual growth of only 0.36 percent (as the U.S. went from 249 million to 281 million).

Overall, nearly 15 percent of Americans were foreign-born in 1910. In 1999, our foreign-born were about 10 percent of our total. (In 1970, the foreign-born portion of our population was down to about 5 percent. Most of the rebound resulted from a more liberal immigration law enacted in 1965.) Or look at the "foreign stock" data. These figures combine Americans born in foreign lands and their offspring, even if those children have only one foreign-born parent. Today, America's "foreign stock" amounts to 21 percent of the population and heading up. But in 1910, the comparable figure was 34 percent?one third of the entire country?and the heavens did not collapse.

We can take in more immigrants, if we want to. Should we?

Return to the idea that immigrants could swamp American culture. If that is true, we clearly should not increase our intake. But what if, instead of swamping us, immigration helps us become a stronger nation and a swamper of others in the global competition of civilizations?

Immigration is now what keeps America growing. According to the U.N., the typical American woman today bears an average of 1.93 children over the course of her childbearing years. That is mildly below the 2.1 "replacement" rate required to keep a population stable over time, absent immigration. The "medium variant" of the most recent Census Bureau projections posits that the U.S. population will grow from 281 million in 2000 to 397 million in 2050 with expected immigration, but only to 328 million should we choose a path of zero immigration. That is a difference of a population growth of 47 million versus 116 million. (The 47 million rise is due mostly to demographic momentum from previous higher birthrates.) If we have zero immigration with today's low birthrates indefinitely, the American population would eventually begin to shrink, albeit slowly.

Is more population good for America? When it comes to potential global power and influence, numbers can matter a great deal. Taxpayers, many of them, pay for a fleet of aircraft carriers. And on the economic side it is better to have a customer boom than a customer bust. (It may well be that Japan's stagnant demography is one cause of its decade-long slump.) The environmental case could be debated all day long, but remember that an immigrant does not add to the global population?he merely moves from one spot on the planet to another.

But will the current crop of immigrants acculturate? Immigrants to America always have. Some critics, like Mr. Buchanan, claim that this time, it's different. Mexicans seem to draw his particular ire, probably because they are currently our largest single source of immigration.

Yet only about a fifth (22 percent) of legal immigrants to America currently come from Mexico. Adding illegal immigrants might boost the figure to 30 percent, but the proportion of Mexican immigrants will almost surely shrink over time. Mexican fertility has diminished from 6.5 children per woman 30 years ago to 2.5 children now, and continues to fall. If high immigration continues under such circumstances, Mexico will run out of Mexicans.

California hosts a wide variety of immigrant groups in addition to Mexicans. And the children and grandchildren of Koreans, Chinese, Khmer, Russian Jews, Iranians, and Thai (to name a few) will speak English, not Spanish. Even among Mexican-Americans, many second- and third-generation offspring speak no Spanish at all, often to the dismay of their elders (a familiar American story).

Michael Barone's book The New Americans theorizes that Mexican immigrants are following roughly the same course of earlier Italian and Irish immigrants. Noel Ignatiev's book How the Irish Became White notes that it took a hundred years until Irish-Americans (who were routinely characterized as drunken "gorillas") reached full income parity with the rest of America.

California recently repealed its bilingual education programs. Nearly half of Latino voters supported the proposition, even though it was demonized by opponents as being anti-Hispanic. Latina mothers reportedly tell their children, with no intent to disparage the Spanish language, that "Spanish is the language of busboys"?stressing that in America you have to speak English to get ahead.

The huge immigration wave at the dawn of the twentieth century undeniably brought tumult to America. Many early social scientists promoted theories of what is now called "scientific racism," which "proved" that persons from Northwest Europe were biologically superior. The new immigrants?Jews, Poles, and Italians?were considered racially apart and far down the totem pole of human character and intelligence. Blacks and Asians were hardly worth measuring. The immigration wave sparked a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, peaking in the early 1920s. At that time, the biggest KKK state was not in the South; it was Indiana, where Catholics, Jews, and immigrants, as well as blacks, were targets.

Francis Walker, superintendent of the U.S. Bureau of the Census in the late 1890s, and later president of MIT, wrote in 1896 that "The entrance of such vast masses of peasantry degraded below our utmost conceptions is a matter which no intelligent patriot can look upon without the gravest apprehension and alarm. They are beaten men from beaten races. They have none of the ideas and aptitudes such as belong to those who were descended from the tribes that met under the oak trees of old Germany to make laws and choose chiefs." (Sorry, Francis, but Germany did not have a good twentieth century.)

Fast-forward to the present. By high margins, Americans now tell pollsters it was a very good thing that Poles, Italians, and Jews emigrated to America. Once again, it's the newcomers who are viewed with suspicion. This time, it's the Mexicans, Filipinos, and people from the Caribbean who make Americans nervous. But such views change over time. The newer immigrant groups are typically more popular now than they were even a decade ago.

Look at the high rates of intermarriage. Most Americans have long since lost their qualms about marriage between people of different European ethnicities. That is spreading across new boundaries. In 1990, 64 percent of Asian Americans married outside their heritage, as did 37 percent of Hispanics. Black-white intermarriage is much lower, but it climbed from 3 percent in 1980 to 9 percent in 1998. (One reason to do away with the race question on the census is that within a few decades we won't be able to know who's what.)

Can the West, led by America, prevail in a world full of sometimes unfriendly neighbors? Substantial numbers of people are necessary (though not sufficient) for a country, or a civilization, to be globally influential. Will America and its Western allies have enough people to keep their ideas and principles alive?

On the surface, it doesn't look good. In 1986, I wrote a book called The Birth Dearth. My thesis was that birth rates in developed parts of the world?Europe, North America, Australia, and Japan, nations where liberal Western values are rooted?had sunk so low that there was danger ahead. At that time, women in those modern countries were bearing a lifetime average of 1.83 children, the lowest rate ever absent war, famine, economic depression, or epidemic illness. It was, in fact, 15 percent below the long-term population replacement level.

Those trendlines have now plummeted even further. Today, the fertility rate in the modern countries averages 1.5 children per woman, 28 percent below the replacement level. The European rate, astonishingly, is 1.34 children per woman?radically below replacement level. The Japanese rate is similar. The United States is the exceptional country in the current demographic scene.

As a whole, the nations of the Western world will soon be less populous, and a substantially smaller fraction of the world population. Demographer Samuel Preston estimates that even if European fertility rates jump back to replacement level immediately (which won't happen) the continent would still lose 100 million people by 2060. Should the rate not level off fairly soon, the ramifications are incalculable, or, as the Italian demographer Antonio Golini likes to mutter at demograph-ic meetings, "unsustainable?unsustainable." (Shockingly, the current Italian fertility rate is 1.2 children per woman, and it has been at or below 1.5 for 20 years?a full generation.)

The modern countries of the world, the bearers of Western civilization, made up one third of the global population in 1950, and one fifth in 2000, and are projected to represent one eighth by 2050. If we end up in a world with nine competing civilizations, as

Samuel Huntington maintains, this will make it that much harder for Western values to prevail in the cultural and political arenas.

The good news is that fertility rates have also plunged in the less developed countries?from 6 children in 1970 to 2.9 today. By the middle to end of this century, there should be a rough global convergence of fertility rates and population growth.

Since September 11, immigration has gotten bad press in America. The terrorist villains, indeed, were foreigners. Not only in the U.S. but in many other nations as well, governments are suddenly cracking down on illegal entry. This is understandable for the moment. But an enduring turn away from legal immigration would be foolhardy for America and its allies.

If America doesn't continue to take in immigrants, it won't continue to grow in the long run. If the Europeans and Japanese don't start to accept more immigrants they will evaporate. Who will empty the bedpans in Italy's retirement homes? The only major pool of immigrants available to Western countries hails from the less developed world, i.e. non-white, and non-Western countries.

The West as a whole is in a deep demographic ditch. Accordingly, Western countries should try to make it easier for couples who want to have children. In America, the advent of tax credits for children (which went from zero to $1,000 per child per year over the last decade) is a small step in the direction of fertility reflation. Some European nations are enacting similar pro-natal policies. Bur their fertility rates are so low, and their economies so constrained, that any such actions can only be of limited help.

That leaves immigration. I suggest America should make immigration safer (by more carefully investigating new entrants), but not cut it back. It may even be wise to make a small increase in our current immigration rate. America needs to keep growing, and we can fruitfully use both high- and low-skill immigrants. Pluralism works here, as it does in Canada and Australia.

Can pluralism work in Europe? I don't know, and neither do the Europeans. They hate the idea, but they will depopulate if they don't embrace pluralism, via immigration. Perhaps our example can help Europeans see that pluralism might work in the admittedly more complex European context. Japan is probably a hopeless case; perhaps the Japanese should just change the name of their country to Dwindle.

Our non-pluralist Western allies will likely diminish in population, relative power, and influence during this century. They will become much grayer. Nevertheless, by 2050 there will still be 750 million of them left, so the U.S. needs to keep the Western alliance strong. For all our bickering, let us not forget that the European story in the second half of the twentieth century was a wonderful one; Western Europeans stopped killing each other. Now they are joining hands politically. The next big prize may be Russia. If the Russians choose our path, we will see what Tocqueville saw: that America and Russia are natural allies.

We must enlist other allies as well. America and India, for instance, are logical partners?pluralist, large, English-speaking, and democratic. We must tell our story. And our immigrants, who come to our land by choice, are our best salesmen. We should extend our radio services to the Islamic world, as we have to the unliberated nations of Asia through Radio Free Asia. The people at the microphones will be U.S. immigrants.

We can lose the contest of civilizations if the developing countries don't evolve toward Western values. One of the best forms of "public diplomacy" is immigration. New immigrants send money home, bypassing corrupt governments?the best kind of foreign aid there is. They go back home to visit and tell their families and friends in the motherland that American modernism, while not perfect, ain't half-bad. Some return home permanently, but they bring with them Western expectations of open government, economic efficiency, and personal liberty. They know that Westernism need not be restricted to the West, and they often have an influence on local politics when they return to their home countries.

Still, because of Europe and Japan, the demographic slide of Western civilization will continue. And so, America must be prepared to go it alone. If we keep admitting immigrants at our current levels there will be almost 400 million Americans by 2050. That can keep us strong enough to defend and perhaps extend our views and values. And the civilization we will be advancing may not just be Western, but even more universal: American.

I tend to agree with the second article, however we can't have political correctness/identity politics undercut "one people out of many". Seemingly, when wearing/displaying the American flag on "Cinco de Imaginary" is seen as offensive, then we are heading to a place where this country falls apart.

Did I hear the Mexican President correctly? I know there were some problems with translation. The problem is with the laws against trespassing, not with trespassing. Maybe this is a libertarian issue.

"In Mexico, we are and continue to be respectful to the policies of the United States...but we will retain our firm rejection to criminalizing migration so that people that work and provide things to this nation will be treated as criminals, and we oppose firmly the SB1070 Arizona law, given in fair principle that are partial and discriminatory..."

If you can't check citizenship when you already have other cause to make contact and when you have reason to believe there may be a problem, then when can you check it?

A less discriminatory way of checking would have been to use the census process as we are constitutionally required anyway to find out every 10 years who lives here.

Regarding Calderon, when a politician from anywhere is caught up in that bad of a gaffe, his own laws are far stronger, why is he ever taken seriously again, much less wined and dined?

I heard Mark Levin say last night: Take the Mexican Immigration Law, word for translated word, put an HR number on it and vote it up and down in Washington.

Bottom line the illegal aliens send 17 BILLION plus dollars to the Mexico economy this year, no wonder the Mexican politicians are screaming about Arizona. If this catches on they will take a serious economical hit.

"DOBBS:........The Mexican citizens cross our border illegally. Some of them find work, and many of them send their earnings back to Mexico. Those earnings have added up to nearly $17 billion in the past year. Remittances, as they're called, are expected to become Mexico's primary source of income this year, surpassing the amount of money that Mexico makes on oil exports for the first time ever."

Woof, And the much over looked fact from that is that small towns across America that already have small economies based on local business revenue and wage earners, have been strangled for cash because the money earned by illegals isn't being spent locally. On top of that, many employers pay these people under the table so that no local taxes are collected as well as supressing local wages. But of course their kids attend local schools, go to local health departments and receive many other benefits provided by local taxpayers but we are suppose to just shut up and take it and if we do otherwise then we are labled racist or human rights abusers. P.C.

I agree with his logic except to his "nutshell" conclusion which suddenly makes less sense. I don't think it that heart-wrenching to send people here illegal packing home.Why we can't stop being a nation of dupes? I don't know why we must make immigration more streamlined or easier. Why can't we simply enforce our laws, stop hiring illegals and allowing them to come here and have babies at our expense? Why is this so hard?

****Wednesday, May 19, 2010 Immigration and Liberty by Walter E. Williams My sentiments on immigration are expressed by the welcoming words of poet Emma Lazarus' that grace the base of our Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Those sentiments are probably shared by most Americans and for sure by my libertarian fellow travelers, but their vision of immigration has some blind spots. This has become painfully obvious in the wake Arizona's law that cracks down on illegal immigration. Let's look at the immigration issue step by step.

There are close to 7 billion people on our planet. I'd like to know how the libertarians answer this question: Does each individual on the planet have a natural or God-given right to live in the U.S.? Unless one wishes to obfuscate, I believe that a yes or no can be given to that question just as a yes or no answer can be given to the question whether Williams has a right to live in the U.S.

I believe most people, even my open-borders libertarian friends, would not say that everyone on the planet had a right to live in the U.S. That being the case suggests there will be conditions that a person must meet to live in the U.S. Then the question emerges: Who gets to set those conditions? Should it be the United Nations, the European Union, the Japanese Diet or the Moscow City Duma? I can't be absolutely sure, but I believe that most Americans would recoil at the suggestion that somebody other than Americans should be allowed to set the conditions for people to live in the U.S.

What those conditions should be is one thing and whether a person has a right to ignore them is another. People become illegal immigrants in one of three ways: entering without authorization or inspection, staying beyond the authorized period after legal entry or by violating the terms of legal entry. Most of those who risk prosecution under Arizona's new law fit the first category -- entering without authorization or inspection.

Probably, the overwhelming majority of Mexican illegal immigrants are hardworking, honest and otherwise law-abiding members of the communities in which they reside. It would surely be a heart-wrenching scenario for such a person to be stopped for a driving infraction, have his illegal immigrant status discovered and face deportation proceedings. Regardless of the hardship suffered, being in the U.S. without authorization is a crime.

When crimes are committed, what should be done? Some people recommend amnesia, which turns out to be the root word for amnesty. But surely they don't propose it as a general response to crime where criminals confess their crime, pay some fine and apply to have their crimes overlooked. Amnesty supporters probably wish amnesty to apply to only illegal immigrants. That being the case, one wonders whether they wish it to apply to illegals past, present and future, regardless of race, ethnicity or country of origin.

Various estimates put the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. between 10 and 20 million. One argument says we can't round up and deport all those people. That argument differs little from one that says since we can't catch every burglar, we should grant burglars amnesty. Catching and imprisoning some burglars sends a message to would-be burglars that there might be a price to pay. Similarly, imprisoning some illegal immigrants and then deporting them after their sentences were served would send a signal to others who are here illegally or who are contemplating illegal entry that there's a price to pay.

Here's Williams' suggestion in a nutshell. Start strict enforcement of immigration law, as Arizona has begun. Strictly enforce border security. Most importantly, modernize and streamline our cumbersome immigration laws so that people can more easily migrate to our country.

Top Official Says Feds May Not Process Illegals Referred From ArizonaFOXNews.com

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AP

A top Department of Homeland Security official reportedly said his agency will not necessarily process illegal immigrants referred to them by Arizona authorities.

John Morton, assistant secretary of homeland security for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, made the comment during a meeting on Wednesday with the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune, the newspaper reports.

"I don't think the Arizona law, or laws like it, are the solution," Morton told the newspaper.

The best way to reduce illegal immigration is through a comprehensive federal approach, he said, and not a patchwork of state laws.

The law, which criminalizes being in the state illegally and requires authorities to check suspects for immigration status, is not "good government," Morton said.

In response to Morton's comments, DHS officials said President Obama has ordered the Department of Justice to examine the civil rights and other implications of the law.

Meanwhile, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said ICE is not obligated to process illegal immigrants referred to them by Arizona authorities.

"ICE has the legal discretion to accept or not to accept persons delivered to it by non-federal personnel," Napolitano said. "It also has the discretion to deport or not to deport persons delivered to it by any government agents, even its own."

Morton, according to a biography posted on ICE's website, began his federal service in 1994 and has held numerous positions at the Department of Justice, including as a trial attorney and special assistant to the general counsel in the former Immigration and Naturalization Service and as counsel to the deputy attorney general.

Border apprehensions in Arizona, where roughly 500,000 illegal immigrants are estimated to be living, are up 6 percent since October, according to federal statistics. Roughly 6.5 million residents live in Arizona.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-AL, said it appeared the Obama administration is "nullifying existing law" and suggested Morton may not be the right person for his post if he fails to enforce federal immigration law.

"If he feels he cannot enforce the law, he shouldn't have the job," Sessions told Fox News. "That makes him, in my view, not fulfilling the responsibilities of his office."

Sessions said the U.S. government has "systematically failed" to enforce federal immigration law and claimed Morton's statement is an indication that federal officials do not plan on working with Arizona authorities regarding its controversial law.

"They're telegraphing to every ICE agency in America that they really don't intend on cooperating with Arizona," Sessions said. "The federal government should step up and do it. It's their responsibility."

Woof, It's very simple; our corrupt government officials are intentionally leaving the border unsecured and our current immigration laws unenforced to artificially create a state of crisis so that they can usher in comprehensive immigration reform to replace current law that does not fit with their open border agenda. The current laws were enacted to protect American sovereignty, and if fully enforced, are adequate to that purpose. They don't want to put troops on the border or deport illegals already here because that would end the CRISIS and without the CRISIS they don't have the grounds to scrap current immigration laws and force their agenda driven comprehensive reform down our throats and that is also why the Arizona law is so terrifying to them; if it works and other states do it as well then that might end the CRISIS and they don't want that. It doesn't matter how many Americans are murdered or raped or kidnapped or what the cost to taxpayers is or how destabilizing it is or much illegal drugs enter the country or if it leaves us vulnerable to terrorist attack. It doesn't matter if they economically try to destroy a state or undermine that state's ability to protect its citizens. It doesn't matter that they fail to uphold their oath of office to enforce the laws of our nation. No, it's all good so long as they can futher their agenda. P.C.

I'm planning to move my family and extended family into Mexico for my health, and I would like to ask you to assist me.

We're planning to simply walk across the border from the U.S. into Mexico , and we'll need your help to make a few arrangements.

We plan to skip all the legal stuff like visas, passports, immigration quotas and laws.

I'm sure they handle those things the same way you do here. So, would you mind telling your buddy, President Calderon, that I'm on my way over?

Please let him know that I will be expecting the following:

1. Free medical care for my entire family.

2. English-speaking government bureaucrats for all services I might need, whether I use them or not.

3. Please print all Mexican government forms in English.

4. I want my grandkids to be taught Spanish by English-speaking (bi-lingual) teachers.

5. Tell their schools they need to include classes on American culture and history.

6. I want my grandkids to see the American flag on one of the flag poles at their school.

7. Please plan to feed my grandkids at school for both breakfast and lunch.

8. I will need a local Mexican driver's license so I can get easy access to government services.

9. I do plan to get a car and drive in Mexico , but, I don't plan to purchase car insurance, and I probably won't make any special effort to learn local traffic laws.

10. In case one of the Mexican police officers does not get the memo from their president to leave me alone, please be sure that every patrol car has at least one English-speaking officer.

11. I plan to fly the U.S. flag from my house top, put U S. flag decals on my car, and have a gigantic celebration on July 4th. I do not want any complaints or negative comments from the locals.

12. I would also like to have a nice job without paying any taxes, or have any labor or tax laws enforced on any business I may start.

13. Please have the president tell all the Mexican people to be extremely nice and never say critical things about me or my family, or about the strain we might place on their economy.

14. I want to receive free food stamps.

15. Naturally, I'll expect free rent subsidies.

16. I'll need Income tax credits so although I don't pay Mexican Taxes, I'll receive money from the government.

17. Please arrange it so that the Mexican Gov't pays $4,500 to help me buy a new car.

18.. Oh yes, I almost forgot, please enroll me free into the Mexican Social Security program so that I'll get a monthly income in retirement.

I know this is an easy request because you already do all these things for all his people who walk over to the U.S. from Mexico . I am sure that President Calderon won't mind returning the favor if you ask him nicely.

Yes, the President of the United States attacked the state of Arizona for passing a state law which mirrors a federal law that, since 1940, requires legal residents of the U.S. to carry proof of legal residency and show it when asked by law enforcement officers.

Following this attack, the President refused to call on reporters from U.S. news organizations apparently fearing the question, "Have you read the Arizona law?"—a question which had already revealed that neither Atty. Gen. Eric Holder, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, nor State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley had read the Arizona law before denouncing it as "discriminatory" and "unconstitutional"

The President made his remarks as part of a joint appearance with Mexican President Calderon, the only person on the planet more hypocritical than Obama.

Calderon blistered the Arizona law at that joint appearance at the White House and the next day before Congress, earning him a standing ovation from the Democrats while Republicans kept their seats. It appeared that when Democrats hear the words "illegal immigrants", they really hear "undocumented Democrats."

Nowhere in the lapdog media was Calderon called on his hypocrisy. The immigration laws of the Republic of Mexico provide for incarceration and deportation without trial, interpreters, lawyers, due process, etc. for anyone illegally in Mexico. No illegal immigrant in Mexico may receive government assistance of any kind and their children may not attend Mexican schools.

In fact, the laws of Mexico allow the army and all law enforcement agencies to enforce their draconian immigration laws, including the authority to demand "papers" from anyone who looks like a non-Mexican.

Mexico forbids legal non-citizen residents from holding office or voting in Mexican elections. A voter I.D. with picture and thumbprint must be produced before any Mexican citizen can vote. No non-Mexican can become a Mexican citizen.

The President should have pointed that out to Calderon. In fact, the President should have complimented the Mexican president on the way his country has preserved it's sovereignty and proposed the ultimate compliment—"reforming" American immigration law by adopting Mexican immigration law.

An American President did speak about immigration 103 years ago and his words ring true today:

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith, becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American... There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language ... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."—Theodore Roosevelt, 1907

Our current President, at the White House joint appearance with Calderon declared "in the 21st century we are not defined by our borders."

Taking the President's cue, the hate America chorus started agitating for a boycott of all things Arizona. City councils in Democrat dominated (and economically failing) cities passed resolutions forbidding city employees from traveling on city business to Arizona and urged all their citizens to do the same.

Apparently, the boycott of visitors from San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego has caused a sharp drop of visiting malcontents and agitators in Arizona. Arizona businesses report an uptick of wholesome, family visitors to their state following a nationwide grass roots-led "buycott" of all things Arizona.

The backlash against San Diego was particularly painful. The San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau reports angry letters from Arizona families who love to vacation in the hot summer months in beautiful San Diego vowing to take their vacations elsewhere.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer started doing TV ads assailing the President's attack on Arizona when it became apparent that Arizonans were not going to be bullied. The most recent poll puts Arizona voters 71% in favor of their state illegal immigration crackdown and Governor Brewer up 25% over her nearest rival in the August primary.

Even "Amnesty" John McCain, running for his political life against challenger border-control advocate J.D. Hayworth, put up his own TV ad vowing to "build the danged fence."

Even the Department of Homeland Security last week had to acknowledge the open border was a national security threat. In an alert issued to law enforcement in Texas, the feds warned of Somali terrorists, some aided by the Cuban Embassy in Kenya, crossing through Mexico into the U.S.

This follows at least two busts of smuggling rings specializing in getting Somali terrorists into the U.S. In one such case, the federal prosecutor indicated that "hundreds" of trained terrorists had made it into the U.S. and could not be located.

Ranchers in the area where rancher Rob Krentz was assassinated by the Mexican drug cartels constantly report finding prayer rugs and Korans left in the desert by illegals crossing their ranches.

If, "in the 21st Century, we are not defined by our borders," we will be defined as a country under attack from within as the war comes home and Americans die at the bloody hands of jihadis who found our weak underbelly—our open border with Mexico.

And this is exactly why they are "anchor babies" and why this law has to change. Now it is that much harder to get this guy out of the country because he is going to ask what about my kids who are citizens. *He* should have thought about that beofre he came here illegally. And obviously he did. And obviously he never thought anyone would actually enforce the law and now he is going to use the "how dare you break up families defense". God are we stupid or what?

****" Alfonso Martinez, a 38-year-old Phoenix carpenter and father of three children who are American citizens, said he's been living illegally in the United States for 21 years while trying to get legal status."If they stop me and they find my status, who's going to feed my kids? Who's going to keep working hard for them?"****

Immigration law protesters march on Ariz. Capitol

PHOENIX (AP) - Thousands of people from around the country marched to the Arizona state Capitol on Saturday to protest the state's tough new crackdown on illegal immigration.

Opponents of the law suspended their boycott against Arizona and bused in protesters from around the country. Organizers said the demonstration could bring in as many as 50,000 people.

Midtown Phoenix buzzed with protesters carrying signs and American flags. Dozens of police officers were on standby along the route of the five-mile march, and helicopters hovered overhead.

Protesters braved temperatures that were forecast to reach 95 degrees by mid-afternoon. Some used umbrellas or cardboard signs to protect their faces from the sun. Volunteers handed out water bottles from the beds of pickup trucks, and organizers set up three water stations along the route.

Supporters of the law expect to draw thousands to a rally of their own Saturday evening at a baseball stadium in suburban Tempe, encouraging like-minded Americans to "buycott" Arizona by planning vacations in the state.

Critics of the law, set to take effect July 29, say it unfairly targets Hispanics and could lead to racial profiling. Its supporters say Arizona is trying to enforce immigration laws because the federal government has failed to do so.

The law requires that police conducting traffic stops or questioning people about possible legal violations ask them about their immigration status if there is "reasonable suspicion" that they're in the country illegally.

Supporters of the law insist racial profiling will not be tolerated, but civil rights leaders worry that officers will still rely on assumptions that illegal immigrants are Hispanic.

Luis Jimenez, a 33-year-old college professor who lives in South Hadley, Mass., said the law will force police officers to spend much of their time on immigration violations instead of patrolling neighborhoods or dealing with violent crime.

The law also makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally or to impede traffic while hiring day laborers, regardless of the worker's immigration status.

"You're saying to the cop: 'Go pick up that day laborer. Don't worry about that guy committing crimes,'" said Jimenez, a naturalized citizen from Mexico who grew up in Phoenix.

Alfonso Martinez, a 38-year-old Phoenix carpenter and father of three children who are American citizens, said he's been living illegally in the United States for 21 years while trying to get legal status.

"If they stop me and they find my status, who's going to feed my kids? Who's going to keep working hard for them?" he said, keeping a careful eye on his 6-year-old daughter as his wife pushed their 4-year-old girl in a stroller. Their 13-year-old son walked ahead of them.

Some opponents of the law have encouraged people to cancel conventions in the state and avoid doing business with Arizona-based companies, hoping the economic pressure forces lawmakers to repeal the law.

But Alfredo Gutierrez, chairman of the boycott committee of Hispanic civil rights group Somos America, said the boycott doesn't apply to people coming to resist the law. Opponents said they secured warehouse space for people to sleep on cots instead of staying in hotels.

"The point was to be here for this march to show support for these folks, then we're out," said Jose Vargas, a union representative for New York City teachers. "We're not spending a dime here."

Supporters of the law sought to counteract the economic damage of boycotts by bringing supporters into the state.

"Arizona, we feel, is America's Alamo in the fight against illegal and dangerous entry into the United States," said Gina Loudon of St. Louis, who is organizing the "buycott."

"Our border guards and all of Arizona law enforcement are the undermanned, under-gunned, taxed-to-the-limit front-line defenders trying to hold back the invasion," she said.

In San Francisco, groups planned to protest at the Arizona Diamondbacks' game against the Giants Saturday night.

Perhaps this thread should be retitled the cognitive dissonance of immigration debate in the US. Now we are debating that illegals are fighting for their civil rights analogous to Blacks whose ancestors were brought here in chains. I say enough. And don't tell me the story about they guy who is an "aspiring physicist"(see below)! I am not impressed. Get the hell our of here. They/he are/is illegal. What about the word illegal do they not understand. They have no rights as citizens under our laws. Now we are debating this??

BOSTON (AP) - They gather on statehouse steps with signs and bullhorns, risking arrest. They attend workshops on civil disobedience and personal storytelling, and they hold sit-ins and walk out of class in protest. They're being warned that they could even lose their lives.

Students fighting laws that target illegal immigrants are taking a page from the civil rights era, adopting tactics and gathering praise and momentum from the demonstrators who marched in the streets and sat at segregated lunch counters as they sought to turn the public tide against racial segregation.

"Their struggle then is ours now," said Deivid Ribeiro, 21, an illegal immigrant from Brazil and an aspiring physicist. "Like it was for them, this is about survival for us. We have no choice."

Undocumented students, many of whom consider themselves "culturally American" because they have lived in the U.S. most of their lives, don't qualify for federal financial aid and can't get in-state tuition rates in some places. They are drawing parallels between themselves and the 1950s segregation of black and Mexican-American students.

"I think it's genius," said Amilcar Shabazz, chairman of the W.E.B. DuBois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts. "If you want to figure out how to get your story out and change the political mood in America, everybody knows the place to start your studies is the civil rights movement."

For two years, Renata Teodoro lived in fear of being deported to her native Brazil, like her mother, brother and sister. She reserved her social contact for close friends, was extra careful about signing her name anywhere, and fretted whenever anyone asked about her immigration status, because she been living illegally in the United States since she was 6.

Yet on a recent afternoon, Teodoro gathered with other illegal immigrants outside the Massachusetts Statehouse with signs, fliers and a bullhorn - then marched the streets of Boston, putting herself in danger of arrest by going public but hoping her new openness would prompt action on the DREAM Act, a federal bill to allow people like her a pathway to citizenship via college enrollment or military service.

"I don't care. I can't live like this anymore," said Teodoro, 22, a leader of the Student Immigration Movement and a part-time student at UMass-Boston. "I'm not afraid, and I have to take a stand."

The shift has been building, said Tom Shields, a doctoral student at Brandeis University in Waltham who is studying the new student movement.

"In recent months, there has been an interest in connecting the narrative of their struggle to the civil rights effort for education," Shields said.

The movement has gained attention of Congress. Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Richard Lugar, R-Ind., sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano in April, asking her to halt deportations of immigrant students who could earn legal status under DREAM, which stands for the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors act, and which they're sponsoring.

Last month, three illegal immigrant students demanding to meet with Arizona Sen. John McCain about DREAM were arrested and later detained for refusing to leave his Tucson office. High school and college students in Chicago and Denver walked out of class this year to protest Arizona's tough new law requiring immigrants to carry registration papers. In December, immigrant students staged a "Trail of Dreams" march from Miami's historic Freedom Tower to Washington, D.C., to raise support for DREAM.

Similar student immigrant groups have sprung up at the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Houston.

By attaching themselves to the civil rights movement, Shabazz said, the immigrant students can claim the moral high ground and underdog status of the debate.

"The question now is ... can they convince moderate, middle-of-the-road, independent voters to support them?" he said.

The Rev. William Lawson, an 81-year-old civil rights leader and retired pastor of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Houston, called the student activists' tactics courageous and said he'd like to meet them. But Lawson, who marched with Martin Luther King Jr., cautioned student immigrant activists to prepare for peers getting arrested, deported or possibly killed.

"You do have to expect consequences. Many civil rights activists faced injury, sometimes death," said Lawson. "And I'm not sure how many of these (students) understand the fundamental philosophy of nonviolence."

Students have to keep in mind the audience they're trying to win over, said Lonnie King, 73, a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the group responsible for sit-ins at segregated restaurants across the South in the 1960s.

"They need to understand that the bulk of folks are in the middle," King said. "They have to coach their message to make it broadly appealing."

In Massachusetts, hundreds of student activists have gone through training by Marshall Ganz, a public policy lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School and a former organizer with the late Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers movement. At special camps, students attend workshops on civil disobedience, storytelling and media outreach.

Students who have attended the workshops even continue to use the well-known farm workers' rallying clap at the end of organizing meetings.

"They know that clap," Ganz said, "because I taught them that clap. It's all about the experience."

Teodoro said the training changed her life and showed her the cause was larger than herself.

During the rally last week in Boston, she led a march from the Massachusetts Statehouse to Sen. Scott Brown's office at the John F. Kennedy federal building, which also houses U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices. Along with Carlos Savio Oliveira, 22, of Falmouth, Mass., another illegal immigrant, the pair walked into the federal building to hand Brown's staff 1,500 letters of support for the DREAM Act.

Outside supporters wore T-shirts with the words "Brown is beautiful" - a pun referring to the Chicano movement chant and Brown's well-publicized nude photo spread in Cosmopolitan magazine as a college student.

Brown, whose office was previously the site of a sit-in by the same group, has not said whether he supports the bill.

In September, Teodoro and a dozen other students also took a weeklong trip from Boston to the South, with Shields driving.

Along the way, they met with black former students who desegregated Clinton High School in Tennessee and Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. They visited civil rights museums and filmed the journey for a planned documentary. But the highlight was meeting Carlotta Walls LaNier, a member of the Little Rock Nine.

Teodoro cornered LaNier at a book signing of her memoir, "A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School."

"I went up to her at the signing and told her my story and tried not to cry," Teodoro said. "She listened. Then, she hugged me."

Woof, My only question is, why doesn't the headline say, "Mexican Army invades sovereign U.S. territory in effort to frame U.S. Border Patrol agent for murder on Mexican soil"? How much of this crap do we have to take; if you don't want to be shot, don't try to kill Border Patrol agents with rocks, AND STAY THE f AWAY FROM OUR BORDER!www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fgw-border-slaying-20100610,0,1493671.story P.C.

Ohhh! this could get ugly. If the agent is deported to Mexico for trial........? Watch what happens to the border then, when blue flu hits the border patrol. Where is the president anyway? I suspect that a lot of citizens living on the border are now pulling shotguns and hunting rifles out of the closets and hanging them over the fireplace now. I would hate to be someone caught cutting a ranchers fence or barging thru a farmers field right now in that area.........

My family owns land where one of these raids came through, it still resonates. This is the history people don't know.----------------------------------------------------------------------------

PLAN OF SAN DIEGO. With the outbreak of revolution in northern Mexico in 1910, federal authorities and officials of the state of Texas feared that the violence and disorder might spill over into the Rio Grande valley. The Mexican and Mexican-American populations residing in the Valley far outnumbered the Anglo population. Many Valley residents either had relatives living in areas of Mexico affected by revolutionary activity or aided the various revolutionary factions in Mexico. The revolution caused an influx of political refugees and illegal immigrants into the border region, politicizing the Valley population and disturbing the traditional politics of the region. Some radical elements saw the Mexican Revolution as an opportunity to bring about drastic political and economic changes in South Texas. The most extreme example of this was a movement supporting the "Plan of San Diego," a revolutionary manifesto supposedly written and signed at the South Texas town of San Diego on January 6, 1915. The plan, actually drafted in a jail in Monterrey, Nuevo León, provided for the formation of a "Liberating Army of Races and Peoples," to be made up of Mexican Americans, African Americans, and Japanese, to "free" the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Colorado from United States control. The liberated states would be organized into an independent republic, which might later seek annexation to Mexico. There would be a no-quarter race war, with summary execution of all white males over the age of sixteen. The revolution was to begin on February 20, 1915. Federal and state officials found a copy of the plan when local authorities in McAllen, Texas, arrested Basilio Ramos, Jr., one of the leaders of the plot, on January 24, 1915.

The arrival of February 20 produced only another revolutionary manifesto, rather than the promised insurrection. Similar to the original plan, this second Plan of San Diego emphasized the "liberation" of the proletariat and focused on Texas, where a "social republic" would be established to serve as a base for spreading the revolution throughout the southwestern United States. Indians were also to be enlisted in the cause. But with no signs of revolutionary activity, state and federal authorities dismissed the plan as one more example of the revolutionary rhetoric that flourished along the border. This feeling of complacency was shattered in July 1915 with a series of raids in the lower Rio Grande valley connected with the Plan of San Diego. These raids were led by two adherents of Venustiano Carranza, revolutionary general, and Aniceto Pizaña and Luis De la Rosa, residents of South Texas. The bands used the guerilla tactics of disrupting transportation and communication in the border area and killing Anglos. In response, the United States Army moved reinforcements into the area.

A third version of the plan called for the foundation of a "Republic of Texas" to be made up of Texas, New Mexico, California, Arizona, and parts of Mississippi and Oklahoma. San Antonio, Texas, was to serve as revolutionary headquarters, and the movement's leadership continued to come from South Texas. Raids originated on both sides of the Rio Grande, eventually assuming a pattern of guerilla warfare. Raids from the Mexican side came from territory under the control of Carranza, whose officers were accused of supporting the raiders. When the United States recognized Carranza as president of Mexico in October 1915, the raids came to an abrupt halt. Relations between the United States and Carranza quickly turned sour, however, amid growing violence along the border. When forces under another revolutionary general, Francisco (Pancho) Villa, attacked Columbus, New Mexico, in March 1916, the United States responded by sending a large military force under Gen. John J. Pershing into northern Mexico in pursuit of Villa. When the United States rejected Carranza's demands to withdraw Pershing's troops, fear of a military conflict between the United States and Mexico grew. In this volatile context, there was a renewal of raiding under the Plan of San Diego in May 1916. Mexican officials were even considering the possibility of combining the San Diego raiders with regular Mexican forces in an attack on Laredo. In late June, Mexican and United States officials agreed to a peaceful settlement of differences, and raids under the Plan of San Diego came to a halt.

The Plan of San Diego and the raids that accompanied it were originally attributed to the supporters of the ousted Mexican dictator Gen. Victoriano Huerta, who had been overthrown by Carranza in 1914. The evidence indicates, however, that the raids were carried out by followers of Carranza, who manipulated the movement in an effort to influence relations with the United States. Fatalities directly linked to the raids were surprisingly small; between July 1915 and July 1916 some thirty raids into Texas produced only twenty-one American deaths, both civilian and military. More destructive and disruptive was the near race war that ensued in the wake of the plan as relations between the whites and the Mexicans and Mexican Americans deteriorated in 1915–16. Federal reports indicated that more than 300 Mexicans or Mexican Americans were summarily executed in South Texas in the atmosphere generated by the plan. Economic losses ran into the millions of dollars, and virtually all residents of the lower Rio Grande valley suffered some disruption in their lives from the raids. Moreover, the plan's legacy of racial antagonism endured long after the plan itself had been forgotten.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Don M. Coerver and Linda B. Hall, Texas and the Mexican Revolution: A Study in State and National Border Policy, 1910–1920 (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1984). Charles C. Cumberland, "Border Raids in the Lower Rio Grande Valley-1915," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 57 (January 1954). Charles H. Harris III and Louis R. Sadler, "The Plan of San Diego and the Mexican-U.S. War Crisis of 1916: A Reexamination," Hispanic American Historical Review 58 (August 1978). Friedrich Katz, The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States and the Mexican Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). James A. Sandos, "The Plan of San Diego: War and Diplomacy on the Texas Border, 1915–1916," Arizona and the West 14 (Spring 1972). James Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands: Anarchism and the Plan of San Diego, 1904–1923 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992).

Finally a bill introduced in Arizona to challenge this phoney interpretation of the Constitution. Of course it will eventually wind up in the Supreme Court and if Bama can pack it to a majority with liberals it will lose as will the United States but that said I like the legal analysis in the article posted after the Time magazine article that is posted below. I think the second article makes a very good case that children of illegals are not simply subject to the jurisdiction of the US simply by residing here when they are born. If both their parents are here illegally then both parents are subject to and thus citizens of another country. Therefore so are their children. What I didn't realize is that before 1868 there was absolutely nothing in the Constitution that proclaimed anyone born here is an automatic citizen. It was enacted in 1868 in the 14th amendment apparently to protect blacks and their children. Not anyone walking over a border and setting up shop in the US. And since the slave ancestors of Blacks were dragged here in chains, unlike any other group in our history this provision certainly makes sense as it was meant to apply to them.

The Arizona law, if enacted, will need to go to the Supreme Court to clarify. Obviously a liberal Court will strike it down. A conservative Court will uphold it.

1) Arizona's Next Immigration Target: Children of Illegals"Anchor babies" isn't a very endearing term, but in Arizona those are the words being used to tag children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants. While not new, the term is increasingly part of the local vernacular because the primary authors of the nation's toughest and most controversial immigration law are targeting these tots - the legal weights that anchor many undocumented aliens in the U.S. - for their next move.

Buoyed by recent public opinion polls suggesting they're on the right track with illegal immigration, Arizona Republicans will likely introduce legislation this fall that would deny birth certificates to children born in Arizona - and thus American citizens according to the U.S. Constitution - to parents who are not legal U.S. citizens. The law largely is the brainchild of state Sen. Russell Pearce, a Republican whose suburban district, Mesa, is considered the conservative bastion of the Phoenix political scene. He is a leading architect of the Arizona law that sparked outrage throughout the country: Senate Bill 1070, which allows law enforcement officers to ask about someone's immigration status during a traffic stop, detainment or arrest if reasonable suspicion exists - things like poor English skills, acting nervous or avoiding eye contact during a traffic stop. (See the battle for Arizona: will a border crackdown work?)

But the likely new bill is for the kids. While SB 1070 essentially requires of-age migrants to have the proper citizenship paperwork, the potential "anchor baby" bill blocks the next generation from ever being able to obtain it. The idea is to make the citizenship process so difficult that illegal immigrants pull up the "anchor" and leave. (See pictures of the Great Wall of America.)

The question is whether that would violate the U.S. Constitution. The 14th Amendment states that "all persons, born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." It was intended to provide citizenship for freed slaves and served as a final answer to the Dred Scott case, cementing the federal government's control over citizenship.

But that was 1868. Today, Pearce says the 14th Amendment has been "hijacked" by illegal immigrants. "They use it as a wedge," Pearce says. "This is an orchestrated effort by them to come here and have children to gain access to the great welfare state we've created." Pearce says he is aware of the constitutional issues involved with the bill and vows to introduce it nevertheless. "We will write it right." He and other Republicans in the red state Arizona point to popular sympathy: 58% of Americans polled by Rasmussen think illegal immigrants whose children are born here should not receive citizenship; support for that stance is 76% among Republicans.

Those who oppose the bill say it would lead to more discrimination and divide the community. Among them is Phoenix resident Susan Vie, who is leading a citizen group that's behind an opposing ballot initiative. She moved to the U.S. 30 years ago from Argentina, became a naturalized citizen and now works as a client-relations representative for a vaccine company. "I see a lot of hate and racism behind it," Vie says. "Consequently, I believe it will create - and it's creating it now - a separation in our society." She adds, "When people look at me, they will think, 'Is she legal or illegal?' I can already feel it right now." Vie's citizen initiative would prohibit SB 1070 from taking affect, place a three-year moratorium on all related laws - including the anchor baby bill - to buy more time for federal immigration reform. Her group is racing to collect 153,365 signatures by July 1 to qualify for the Nov. 2 general election.

Both sides expect the anchor baby bill to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court before it is enacted. "I think it would be struck down as facially unconstitutional. I can't imagine a federal judge saying this would be OK," says Dan Barr, a longtime Phoenix lawyer and constitutional litigator. Potentially joining the anchor baby bill at the Supreme Court may be SB 1070, which Arizona Republican Governor Jan Brewer signed into law in April. It is set to take effect July 29, but at least five courtroom challenges have been filed against it. Pearce says he will win them all.

I have been bombarded lately with requests to revisit the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendments “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” language. Some desire confirmation whether the language simply implies temporary obedience to laws, while others want to confirm whether it requires something more direct and substantial. I’ll spare the reader a lengthy treatise by making this short and to the point.

Perhaps the first most important thing to understand about national birthright is that there was no national birthright rule until the year 1866. One will look in vain to find any national law on the subject prior to this year, or even any mention of the right to citizenship by birth under the United States Constitution.

One reason for the absence of an early-defined national birthright rule is that States had decided for themselves who were its citizens by virtue of being born within the limits of the State. Prior to the 14th amendment citizens of the United States were strictly defined as citizens of the States.

After the Revolution, States retained only those portions of common law that were applicable to their local circumstances. The practice of England at the time was every person born within the realm of the King was a natural born subject by virtue of birth alone. In the United States, such a rule was not strictly followed as children born to black slaves, transient aliens, or Indians, followed the condition of their father.

Virginia for example, enacted an early birthright law sponsored by Thomas Jefferson in May of 1779 that specifically required the father to be a citizen: “[A]ll infants, whenever born, whose father, if living, or otherwise, whose mother was a citizen at the time of their birth…shall be deemed citizens of this Commonwealth…”

Conceivably, Congress could had from the beginning attempted to include a defined birthright rule under the laws of naturalization – whether due to place of birth or parentage – but would have found, just as the Thirty-Ninth Congress had discovered, to be no simple matter as individual States had differing opinions over who should, or should not, be its citizens.As a rule, the nation considered only those patriotic immigrants who came here for the exclusive purpose to settling amongst us, bringing with them wealth, like habits and customs as those worthy to become part of our society. More importantly, those willing to renounce all prior allegiances to their country of origin and swear fidelity to this one. Paupers, vagabonds and imperialist were universally despised.Imagine for a moment Congress debating during the constitutional convention, or even years following the adoption of the Constitution, a national criterion for establishing citizenship by birth of all persons as practiced under English common law. Firstly, that would have been rejected by a number of States as placing men of color on an equal footing with the Anglo-Saxon race. This in return forcing perhaps an attempt to compromise using the words “free white men,” with that in return being rejected by some northern States as repugnant of the Declaration’s “all men are created equal.”Moreover, there undoubtly would been terrible disputes over the fact the nation was attempting to adopt common law as general law, something more than a few considered derogatory. James Madison succinctly illustrates such dilemma to George Washington:

What could the Convention have done? If they had in general terms declared the Common law to be in force, they would have broken in upon the legal Code of every State in the most material points: they wd. have done more, they would have brought over from G.B. a thousand heterogeneous & anti-republican doctrines, and even the ecclesiastical Hierarchy itself, for that is a part of the Common law.

So what was to be the premise behind America’s first and only constitutional birthright declaration in the year 1866? Simply all children born to parents who owed no foreign allegiance were to be citizens of the United States, that is to say, not only must a child be born within the limits of the United States, but born within the complete allegiance of the United States as a nation – not merely its laws only.

In other words, there is no such thing as American citizenship without allegiance to the nation. Why make citizens of those who owe no allegiance to the country, who might join the forces of another country against you? This goes to the core of American allegiance.

Many make the silly mistake of confusing temporary allegiance to a countries laws under the law of nations with that of allegiance to a nation. In school we pledge allegiance to the flag and the “Republic for which it stands,” not pledge our allegiance to local traffic laws. No one during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries confused owing allegiance to the laws with that of owing allegiance to a nation.

If anyone needs any confirmation of the above conclusion, need only to view Sec. 1992 of U.S. Revised Statutes the same Congress had adopted as national law in the year 1866: “All persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are declared to be citizens of the United States.”

Sen. Trumbull stated during the drafting of the above national birthright law that it was the goal to “make citizens of everybody born in the United States who owe allegiance to the United States.”

Sen. Trumbull felt the words, “That all persons born in the United States and owing allegiance thereto are hereby declared to be citizens” would be more than sufficient to fulfill this goal. However, after investigation it was found the United States had no authority to make citizens of those temporarily residing in the United States who owed only a “temporary allegiance.”

This is why it was later demanded that a complete and immediate allegiance – that is, “not owing allegiance to anyone else” – be established under a constitutional amendment and not merely a temporary allegiance.

Framer of the Fourteenth Amendments first section, John Bingham, said this language meant “every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen.” As applied to aliens, this meant those aliens who first declared their intent to become citizens of the United States, and who had renounced their allegiance to some other sovereignty as required under U.S. naturalization laws.

During the debates of the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause, both its primary framers, Sen. Jacob Howard and Sen. Lyman Trumbull listened to concerns of including such persons as Chinese, Mongolians, and Gypsies to citizenship. Additionally, Sen. Fessenden raised the question of persons born of parents from abroad temporarily in this country, and of course, the question of Indians. Chinese, if one remembers their history, where a major concern on the part of citizens on the pacific coast and occupied a great deal of the news of the time (mostly all negative).

Sen. Trumbull attempted to assure Senators that Indians were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. Sen. Johnson argued that Sen. Trumbull was in error in regards to the Indian’s not being under the jurisdiction of the United States. This must have raised concerns with Howard because he strongly made it known that he had no intention whatsoever to confer citizenship upon the Indians under his amendment, no matter if born within or outside of their tribal lands.

Sen. Trumbull and Sen. Howard then settled upon a construction for “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” with Trumbull declaring:

The provision is, that ‘all persons born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.’ That means ‘subject to the complete jurisdiction thereof.’ What do we mean by ‘complete jurisdiction thereof?’ Not owing allegiance to anybody else. That is what it means.

Sen. Trumbull further added, “It cannot be said of any Indian who owes allegiance, partial allegiance if you please, to some other Government that he is ‘subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.’” Sen. Jacob Howard agreed:

concur entirely with the honorable Senator from Illinois [Trumbull], in holding that the word “jurisdiction,” as here employed, ought to be construed so as to imply a full and complete jurisdiction on the part of the United States, whether exercised by Congress, by the executive, or by the judicial department; that is to say, the same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now.

The above statements by Howard and Trumbull give us a good idea of what “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” as employed under the Fourteenth Amendment means: Absence of owing any allegiance to any other foreign power, which in return allows the United States to exercise full and complete jurisdiction over the person.

To understand how an alien might not owe allegiance to some other sovereignty upon arrival to this country, one need to look no further then the naturalization laws of the United States. Under United States law, an alien was required to make a declaration of his intention to become a citizen, and renounce all allegiance to his former government two years before he could make a final application.

Therefore, it does not require a leap of faith to understand what persons, other than citizens themselves, under the Fourteenth Amendment are citizens of the United States by birth: Those aliens who have come with the intent to become U.S. citizens, who had first compiled with the laws of naturalization in declaring their intent and renounce all prior allegiances.

Sen. Trumbull further restates the the goal of the language: “It is only those persons who come completely within our jurisdiction, who are subject to our laws, that we think of making citizens…” He could only be referring to the laws of naturalization and consent to expatriation by the immigrant in order for him to come completely within the jurisdiction of the United States and its laws, i.e., he cannot be a subject of another nation.

On July 18, 1868 Sen. Howard explained expatriation to mean “the emigration of the foreigner from his native land to some other land non animo revertendi; that is, with the intention of changing his domicile and making his permanent home in the country to which he emigrates.” Sen. Howard explained that expatriation could only be complete through law alone, and not through any act of the immigrant acting on his own outside of the law.

A citizen owes the same quality of allegiance to their nation of origin as does their country’s ambassador and foreign ministers while within the limits of another nation unless they freely decide to renounce their allegiance in accordance to law. In other words, it would be preposterous to consider under the meaning given to “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” that a French subject visiting the United States was not a subject of France, but completely subject to the will of the United States while within the limits of the nation without first consenting to expatriation.

The United States has always, as a matter of law, considered new arrivals subjects of the country from which they owed their allegiance. As a matter of law, new arrivals were recognized as bearing the allegiance of the country of their origin. No more is this evident then with the recording of the certificate of intent to become a citizen of the United States:

James Spratt, a native of Ireland, aged about twenty-six years, bearing allegiance to the king of Great Britain and Ireland, who emigrated from Ireland and arrived in the United States on the 1st of June 1812, and intends to reside within the jurisdiction and under the government of the United States, makes report of himself for naturalization according to the acts of congress in that case made and provided, the 14th of April anno domini 1817, in the clerk’s office of the circuit court of the district of Columbia, for the county of Washington: and on the 14th of May 1817, the said James Spratt personally appeared in open court, and declared on oath, that it is his intention to become a citizen of the United States, and to renounce all allegiance and fidelity to every foreign prince, &c.

James Spratt would be considered completely subject to the jurisdiction of the United States with owing no other nation his allegiance under the Fourteenth Amendment. Children born to him would under the Fourteenth Amendment, be citizens of the United States even though he might not yet been awarded citizenship himself. It should be pointed out that woman were not naturalized individually, but only became naturalized by virtue of marriage to a male who became naturalized himself.

Those who were not qualified under naturalization laws of the United States to become citizens of the United States would be unable to renounce their prior allegiances and consent to the full jurisdiction of the United States as needed to become a citizen. This is how children born to Indian’s and Asians were prevented from becoming citizens themselves under the language chosen.

What changed after the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment? Not much really. States adopted laws that excluded either “transient aliens” or those not resident of the State. New York had already a 1857 code that read, “All persons born in this state, and resident within it, except the children of transient aliens, and of alien public ministers and consuls…”

After the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, California, Montana and South Dakota adopted identical language as New York.

In 1898, some thirty years after the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, the United States argued a Chinese man born to Chinese parents in San Francisco could not be a citizen of the United States because his parents were not subjects of the United States at the time of his birth, but the subjects of the emperor of China. (U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark)

The Government had it right and the Supreme Court got it all wrong (deliberately) by deciding the language under old English common law, something the adopted national rule departed sharply from. Additionally, Howard made no reference to citizenship as having anything to do with common law, but virtue of “natural law” and “national law.”

Under old English common law, neither expressed allegiance or, the lack of it, was a requirement for birthright. The Thirty-Ninth congress by contrast, made the lack of owing allegiance to some other sovereignty an advance prerequisite, and by doing so, departed from the common law rule.

If there is one inescapable truth to the text and debates, it is this: When Congress decided to require potential citizens to first be subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States they by default excluded all citizens of other nations temporarily residing in the U.S. who had no intention of becoming citizens themselves or, disqualified of doing so under naturalization laws. This was no oversight because it was too simple to declare the common law rule of jus soli if indeed that was truly the desired goal by these very competent lawyers (both Howard and Trumbull were lawyers). Instead, there were classes of persons no one desired to make citizens, while also being classes of persons national law prohibited from becoming citizens.

Aaron Sargent, a Representative from California during the Naturalization Act of 1870 debates said the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause was not a de-facto right for aliens to obtain citizenship. No one came forward to dispute this conclusion.

While I am definitely against ILLEGAL immigration, and perhaps selfishly, I am also against anchor babies (I know of rich Asians who "vacation" on a tourist visa in HI and deliver their baby, thereby ensuring citizenship), it seems that the law is quite clear. It is futile to challenge it. Further, the Court has also clearly held that you are entitled to hold duel citizenship if you are a citizen by birth here in the USA.

U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898)

Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco to Chinese parents around 1870 (the exact date is uncertain due to discrepancies among the various sources). In 1895, upon his return from a visit to China, he was refused entry by US customs officials, who asserted that despite his having been born in the US, he was a subject of the Chinese emperor and not a US citizen.

The Supreme Court disagreed, ruling on a 6-2 vote that Wong Kim Ark was in fact a US citizen. The court cited the "citizenship clause" of the 14th Amendment, which states that all persons born (or naturalized) in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens. Although the original motivation for this language in the 14th Amendment was to secure citizenship for the freed Negro slaves, the court held that the clause clearly applied to "all persons", regardless of their race or national origin.

As for the question of being "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States -- i.e., the relationship between a person and a government whereby one "owes obedience to the laws of that government, and may be punished for treason or other crimes" -- the Supreme Court observed that English common law (legal tradition inherited from Britain by the US) had long recognized only two jurisdictional exceptions to the principle of ius soli (citizenship by birth on a country's soil): namely, (a) foreign diplomats, and (b) enemy forces in hostile occupation of a portion of the country's territory. Since neither of the above exceptions applied to Wong Kim Ark's parents, the court held that he was unquestionably a US citizen by virtue of his having been born in the US.

Were Wong Kim Ark's parents present here legally at the time of his birth? A general legal principle is that criminal conduct should not be rewarded. It's one thing if the parents are present in the US legally, another if they are not.

Were Wong Kim Ark's parents present here legally at the time of his birth? A general legal principle is that criminal conduct should not be rewarded. It's one thing if the parents are present in the US legally, another if they are not.

"Here legally"? Hmmm interesting moral question, but not relevant. In one of our sordid discriminatory periods of our past Congress of the United States enacted a law, known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting persons of the Chinese race from coming into the United States or becoming naturalized U.S. citizens. Chinese immigrants already in the U.S. were allowed to stay, but were ineligible for naturalization; and if they left the U.S., they generally could not return.

However, U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898) clarified matters and is quite clear, regardless, legal or illegal, if you are born in America you are a citizen. Period.

Another ancillary thought; one could argue that the criminal conduct of someone/anyone here illegally is not rewarded. The parents are not granted citizenship, only the child born in America is given this "reward". One can hardly say the child committed a criminal act merely by being born in America.

It's not just a moral question but a key legal question as well. Just as a bank robber is not free to pass on his criminal takings onto his children, those who criminally enter the US have no legal standing to pass on US citizenship to their children. If one fraudulently or otherwise criminally obtains US citizenship, the citizenship is revoked, the same should be true for multigenerational acts.

Was U.S. vs. Wong Kim Ark Wrongly Decided?By P.A. Madison on December 10, 2006 | 22 Comments | More United States v. Wong Kim Ark is a notable court ruling for its dramatic departure over an earlier holding in the meaning “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” found in Elk v. Wilkins. It is also notable for the majorities insistence that the debates in Congress would not be admissible for controlling the meaning of the words.

Reading the majorities opinion in Wong Kim Ark, one can’t help but wonder why so much emphasis is being placed on such obscure and irrelevant historical overviews as colonial and foreign law. With two previous established court decisions that substantially covered the same ground regarding the meaning and application of the words found under the Fourteenth Amendments citizenship clause, leaves one to wonder what is going on here?

Deeper into the decision, justice Horace Gray (writing for the majority) reveals exactly what the majority is up to: They are attempting to avoid discussion over the construction of the clause by the two Senators whom are most responsible for its language found in the Constitution, Jacob M. Howard and Lyman Trumbull. They are also attempting to keep their holding to what “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in Elk v. Wilkins out of the discussion, or else Wong Kim Ark can’t be said to be a citizen of the United States.

It is clear the Wong Kim Ark majority recognized the only viable approach to the conclusion they sought was to somehow distant themselves from the recorded history left behind by the citizenship clause framers. Justice Gray made no attempt to hide this fact when he wrote: “Doubtless, the intention of the congress which framed, and of the states which adopted, this amendment of the constitution, must be sought in the words of the amendment, and the debates in congress are not admissible as evidence to control the meaning of those words.”

Whatever credibility the court may had at the beginning was soon lost when Gray wrote:

The words “in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution must be presumed to have been understood and intended by the Congress which proposed the Amendment … as the equivalent of the words “within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States…”Here the court is assuming what Congress may have intended while also arguing the written debates that could easily disclose this intent is inadmissible as evidence. This has to be one of the most incompetent and feeble rulings ever handed down by the Supreme Court. Justice John Paul Stevens would take issue with this inept attempt by the majority to rewrite the Constitution: “A refusal to consider reliable evidence of original intent in the Constitution is no more excusable than a judge’s refusal to consider legislative intent.”